2013's Top Security Pain Points: Mobile, APTs, Third-Party Apps

One of the top concerns cited was the proliferation of personally owned mobile devices in the workplace, such as smartphones and tablets. Eighty percent of those surveyed said that laptops and other mobile data-bearing devices pose a significant security risk to their organization’s networks. Yet, with only 13 percent stating they use stricter security standards for personal over corporate-owned devices and 29 percent reporting no security strategy for employee-owned devices at all, there is a clear disconnect between awareness and action. These figures are staggering when compared to the 2010 survey. At that time, only 9 percent of respondents said mobile devices were a rising threat. This year, 73 percent rank mobile as one of the greatest risks within the IT environment.

The state of endpoint risk is not improving according to the fourth annual report researched by the Ponemon Institute and commissioned by Lumension to track endpoint risk, organizational threat strategy and resource availability. In this year’s State of the Endpoint Risk study, IT professionals reported the flood of mobile devices entering their corporate networks, advanced persistent threats and third-party application vulnerabilities are their primary pain points moving into 2013. A few short years ago, these concerns barely made the list.

“Once again, we found the changing security terrain is preventing the state of endpoint security from improving,” said Dr. Larry Ponemon, Chairman and Founder, the Ponemon Institute. “With the rise of hacktivism and advanced persistent threats, along with the sheer number of malware incidents we are seeing today, IT simply cannot keep up with the bad guys. Add to this fact that end users are furthering the complexity of the IT environment by bringing in mobile devices and downloading third-party applications - causing risk to exponentially proliferate. IT simply must take further action before the risk is beyond their control.”

The fourth annual State of Endpoint Risk study conducted by the Ponemon Institute and commissioned by Lumension reports major concerns over increasing security risks.

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